He wondered what they were doing on the Glomar Explorer. It gnawed at him, the way his father said a tooth did when it was starting to tell you it needed a root canal. He’d never had one of those. He’d never even had a permanent tooth pulled; his wisdom teeth came in straight, which made his dentist call him a lucky son of a gun.

He also wondered how the man he figured was his replacement was doing on the ship. He’d read some of Jerry Pournelle’s stories, mostly in Analog. He’d heard him talk, too, at signings at A Change of Hobbit. Pournelle was way to the right of him politically; as far as that went, he’d get on fine with the CIA guys. But he didn’t suffer fools gladly. He could be—he often was—loud and sarcastic. Jerry Stieglitz wondered what the fellow who shared his first name would have to say about trying to scrape bits off Humpty Dumpty’s shell. Something anyone in the way of it would remember a long time, he suspected.

No, Dale and Dave and Jack might not have much fun with Pournelle. They wouldn’t have to listen to him. They were in charge, and he wasn’t. But they’d have to hear him whether they listened or not. When he got going, the whole ship would hear him. So would the gooney birds for a couple of miles around.

Along with everything else that was going on, Jerry started moving stuff out of his apartment and into Anna’s. Her place was bigger and her building allowed cats, two reasons the move was going in that direction. He’d known for a while he would be doing that. Putting boxes in the trunk, driving over, and carrying them inside, though …

“This is really gonna happen,” he said as he set another box of paperbacks down on the living-room floor.

“Yeah.” Anna sounded as doubtful as he did. He supposed all the twos on the verge of becoming one felt that way. She went on, “It’ll take a while before everything all gets blended together and it’s not you and me anymore but just us.”

“Tim and Cheryl are making it work.” Jerry’s friend and the lady he’d married were his type specimens for how to do it right. He tried to put the reason why into words: “They don’t get on each other’s nerves, you know?”

Anna sniffed. “I’m not sure they have any nerves.”

“Hey, be nice.” There were times when Jerry wondered whether getting married, or at least getting married to Anna, was the smartest thing he could do. True, he wouldn’t need to worry about where he’d get laid if he did. They could talk to each other, too. And they trusted each other.